Automation of Robotic Concrete Printing Using Feedback Control System

In recent years, digital fabrication is termed as “third industrial revolution” and its interaction with extrusion based cementitious material has been well known as concrete printing. In concrete printing, a gantry/robotic system deposits concrete layer by layer following G-codes generated from slicing of the 3D component. However, the robotic system does not consider the material (concrete) properties and component geometry which sometimes cause failure in the printing process. Concrete properties are usually attributed with time and therefore the system parameters such as extruder velocity and layer height are necessarily to be controlled accordingly to obtain an uninterrupted smooth flow. In line with this, our current research aims to automate the printing process by collecting material’s fresh properties through a feedforward control system. A six-axis industrial Denso® robot was used for 3D printing of geopolymer concrete with the help of screw pump and ten-millimeter circular extruder. The obtained experimental results confirmed the validity and robustness of this